Agreement on loss and damage deal expected on first day of Cop28 talks

The Cop28 climate summit has officially opened, with the first decision likely to be on relief for the world’s poorest and most vulnerable countries, which are being hit increasingly by climate disaster.

A blueprint for a new fund for loss and damage , focused on the rescue and relief of poor countries stricken by extreme weather, is expected to be officially agreed on and adopted on Thursday. This will see a fund set up under the auspices of the World Bank at first, able to disburse money to developing countries and funded by rich industrialised nations and emerging economies and fossil fuel producing countries, such as China, Gulf states and the Cop28 host country, the United Arab Emirates.

Avi Persaud, an adviser to Mia Mottley, the prime minister of Barbados, told the Guardian: “This is a hard-fought historic agreement. It shows recognition that loss and damage is not a distant risk but part of the lived reality of almost half the world’s populations and that money is needed to reconstruct and rehabilitate if we are not to let the climate crisis reverse decades of development in moments.”

Some campaigners said the blueprint was deeply flawed. Rachel Cleetus of the Union of Concerned Scientists said: “The fight for climate justice is far from over but we need to start disbursing money as needed. We’re hoping that the agreement to operationalise will happen today.”

Simon Stiell, the UN’s climate chief, opened the official negotiations on Thursday with a call for greater urgency in the talks. “We are taking baby steps. Stepping far too slowly from an unstable world that lacks resilience, to working out the best responses to the complex impacts we are facing,” he said. “We must teach climate action to run.”

He warned negotiators: “We are standing at a precipice. If we do not signal the terminal decline of the fossil fuel era as we know it, we welcome our own terminal decline. And we choose to pay with people’s lives.”

He added that countries must take care that people and countries were helped through the massive economic shifts that would be necessary. “If this transition isn’t just, we won’t transition at all. That means justice within and between countries.”

Though the loss and damage text is likely to be adopted on Thursday, technically all texts are still not final until the gavel comes down at the end of the conference, which is scheduled to be on Tuesday 12 December.

Rich countries are expected to announce hundreds of millions in new cash for the loss and damage fund over the next few days, but that will still not reach the hundreds of billions that poor countries need. Madeleine Diouf Sarr, chair of the group of the 48 least developed countries, said: “The progress we’ve made in establishing a loss and damage fund is hugely significant for climate justice, but an empty fund can’t help our people. We expect significant pledges of new and additional finance to be made at Cop28 to ensure the loss and damage fund can start delivering support as soon as possible.”

Negotiations have been going on informally for several days in Dubai, but the official start of the conference on Thursday afternoon meant decisions could be formalised. Usually, countries can wrangle for days or throughout the entire conference and beyond to reach agreement on even simple issues. It was a mark of the importance that is placed on loss and damage that the draft text is likely to be adopted at such speed.

More than 160 heads of state are expected to arrive for a grand ceremony on Friday, where the UK’s King Charles III will make an opening speech, alongside the UN secretary general, António Guterres, and the president of the United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan. The UK prime minister, Rishi Sunak, will attend, along with the leaders of major developing countries including Brazil’s Lula and India’s Narendra Modi.

Joe Biden and Xi Jinping are staying away, but their climate envoys will play a key role at the summit. World leaders will begin two days of meetings on Friday, and when they depart their negotiators – who make up thousands of the 100,000 delegates expected to attend Cop28 – will carry on over the next two weeks with the grinding task of forging agreement among the 190 plus countries represented.

Though many countries are relieved that the loss and damage conclusions look certain to be accepted, they are not likely to make the tough negotiations on other vital issues any easier. Much of the next 10 days will be taken up with talks on how to prevent global heating from exceeding the vital limit of 1.5C (2.7F) above preindustrial levels, after the hottest year humanity has experienced.

Gaston Browne, the prime minister of Antigua, said: “This year’s heat is demonstrating what small island developing states have been saying all along and that is 1.5C is not going to be easy, and so we cannot pat ourselves on the back and say we did good to finally agree on this. The earth is warming, and as it continues to warm, it will cause pain and suffering and more importantly this is happening faster than we expected. We all have to stop burning fossil fuels at the pace we are currently doing and start planting trees as if our lives depend on it.”

Cop28: Can fossil fuel companies transition to clean energy?
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